A key problem in data storage management is how to efficiently manage objects which are relatively small but need to be stored persistently, such as in disk storage rather than in main memory only. Traditional disk storage systems are disclosed in J. Hennessy et al., “Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach,” Chapter 6, Morgan Kaufmann, 1996, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
One of the key issues for storing such objects is that the minimum unit of transfer, known as a sector, is often much larger than the minimum object size. By way of example, a sector size may be more than a factor of two larger than some objects. This means that the disk storage system will transfer sectors between disk and main memory. When an object is much smaller than a sector, the disk storage system does not have a method for transferring just the object. The disk storage system has to transfer the entire sector (or sectors if the object is on a sector boundary) containing the object in order to access just the object.
Thus, a need exists for techniques that efficiently manage small objects in storage transfer units, such as sectors.